[R-G] Mohamed Elmasry: The Islamophobia machine is a new growth industry

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.straight.com/article-200522/mohamed-elmasry-islamophobia-machine-new-growth-industry

Mohamed Elmasry: The Islamophobia machine is a new growth industry

By Mohamed Elmasry

Just as some Jews betrayed their coreligionists by aiding the Nazi  
propaganda machine before and during WWII, today there are Muslims  
just as eagerly and effectively helping the Islamophobia industry to  
stereotype and marginalize their brothers and sisters of the faith.  
These Muslims are very much appreciated and celebrated by those who  
stand to benefit from the promotion of Islamophobia; in fact, they are  
in such demand that the hate-and-fear industry can’t find enough of  
them.

Islamophobia has been around for quite some time, but since 9/11 it  
began to take on form and structure, supported by financiers,  
researchers, writers, and academics, many of whom were self-styled  
“experts” on Islam and terrorism. The Islamophobia industry directly  
filled a need created by right-wing politicians, war mongers, racists,  
lobbyists, and the military war business (from professional mercenary  
companies to arms dealers and manufacturers). Every time a perceived  
need is revealed in a capitalist society, an industry is created,  
sometimes by design, to fill that need.

The West led by the U.S. saw and promoted the need for an Islamophobia  
industry; and now that it is established, it will be around for years  
to come.

There are five central reasons for this phenomenon:

1. The Muslim world is rich in resources, especially crude oil, and  
the West is determined not to pay fair market value for it. Capitalist  
financial powers would rather rob Muslims and the entire Muslim world  
of this valuable resource, using violence if necessary, as in the case  
of Iraq.

2. In geopolitical terms, the Muslim world covers a strategically  
vital area, in which the West is determined to establish a permanent  
presence; military occupation is one favoured means of doing so, as in  
the case of Afghanistan.

3. The Muslim world represents a huge market of close to 1.5 billion  
people, whose buying power is essential if the West is to succeed in  
controlling the one-way flow of its goods—no matter how inferior they  
may be, compared to those of emerging economies in Asia and the flow  
of accumulated Muslim capital the other way.

4. The Israeli factor wields a persistently strong influence in  
western politics, especially the powerful American Israeli lobby in  
Washington. The U.S. and its allies are determined to maintain Israel  
as a strong military outpost in the Middle East and ensure that its  
anti-Muslim policies are immune from any negative judgment; hence the  
Israel-can-do-no-wrong bias.

5. The U.S.-led “war on terror”, plus the politicization of all  
terrorist attacks dating from 9/11 and later, translates in practical  
terms to a need for Islamophobes and other organizations to work  
together in both the public and private sphere. This has led to the  
enactment of anti-civil-liberty laws, Muslim profiling by authorities,  
the restriction of Muslim immigration to the West, and the further  
marginalization of Muslim minorities already established in western  
society.

Like other corporate entities, the Islamophobia industry has been very  
active in creating a public “branding” for its product and a new lingo  
or jargon to identify its artificially created place in our language.  
Thanks to the Islamophobia industry, terms like Islamist,  
Islamofascism, and Eurabia are commonplace.

In the past, Islamist was used within academia to legitimately  
identify specialists in Islam, just as the word Orientalist indicated  
someone specializing in the study of the Orient. But Islamophobes have  
mis-appropriated the term Islamist as a shorthand indicator of every  
imaginable negative idea pertaining to Muslims and Islam.

The term Islamofascism became familiar after the September 2001  
attacks as a way to describe any ideology based on Islam, even if it  
had no connection whatsoever to negative constructs.

The American group FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) found in  
its search of a major reference database that Islamofascism was  
mentioned just twice before 9/11; both times in the British media. In  
1990, a remark by Independent writer Malise Ruthven about governments  
in predominantly Islamic countries stated: “Authoritarian government,  
not to say ‘Islamo-fascism,’ is the rule rather than the exception  
from Morocco to Pakistan.”

Ironically, considering the term’s current usage, most of these  
authoritarian governments—including Morocco and Pakistan—were backed  
by the U.S. at the time. The second mention, also from the Independent  
in 1990, came in a response criticizing Ruthven for coining the term.

Reviewing the term’s subsequent history, however, FAIR reports that:  
“Since 2001, use of the expression has exploded. That year, according  
to a search of major English-language papers in the Nexis database,  
the word and its variant ‘Islamofascist’ appeared 12 times, nearly all  
in reference to Al-Qaeda. The next year that number rose to 69, and it  
reached 92 in 2003 as the word’s definition began expanding to include  
Saddam Hussein’s historically non-religious and somewhat ecumenical  
Ba’athist regime. (As an example, Tariq Aziz, Hussein’s familiar  
spokesperson, was a Christian.)

“The word’s prevalence continued to increase in 2005,” FAIR continues,  
“the year George W. Bush used it in a speech to the National Endowment  
for Democracy (10/6/05); and in 2006 it appeared 594 times in major  
papers. David Horowitz’s ‘Islamofascism Awareness Week’ (IFAW)— 
organized on about a hundred (American) college campuses in October  
2007—was a sign that the term had fully arrived in some right-wing  
circles...”

The word Eurabia is another volatile word, coined to create a growing  
fear that every good thing in Europe (culture, economy, ethnic  
identity, et cetera) will end as its Muslim population increases. The  
term motivates violence against Europe’s Muslim minorities. Meanwhile,  
American Islamophobes are using it to promote the idea that “you have  
to deal with the problem before it comes here”.

FAIR also reported that “At Michigan State University, the campus  
chapter of Young Americans for Freedom invited a bona fide fascist— 
Nick Griffin, the head of the racist British National Party—to speak  
on how Europe is becoming ‘Eurabia’.”

These days, it seems any writer—including those who have never  
achieved much in the way of popularity, profile or status—can get a  
book, op-ed, article, or editorial letter easily published through the  
influence of the Islamophobia industry in western publishing and  
media. Books on such a “hot” topic as the Islamic/Muslim “threat” are  
sure to be widely reviewed from coast to coast, regardless of their  
accuracy or quality.

Mohamed Elmasry is professor emeritus of computer engineering at the  
University of Waterloo, founder of the Canadian Islamic Congress, and  
member of the editorial board of The Canadian Charger.